Context Based Surface Form Generation for Cognitive System Dictionaries

ABSTRACT

A mechanism is provided in a data processing system to implement an annotator for annotating content using context-based surface forms. The mechanism receives a dictionary data structure of surface forms comprising a plurality of regular expressions and input content. The mechanism compares a given span of text in the input content to each regular expression in the dictionary data structure. Responsive to the given span of text matching a given regular expression, an annotator annotates the span of text with a content indicator corresponding to a content category associated with the dictionary data structure. The mechanism performs a natural language processing operation on the input content based on results of the annotation.

BACKGROUND

The present application relates generally to an improved data processingapparatus and method and more specifically to mechanisms for contextbased surface form generation for cognitive system dictionaries.

In modern computing environments such as the Internet, computing toolsare present to specifically track and analyze a user's interaction withcontent so that advertisers can target those individuals withadvertisements designed to entice the individual to purchase a productor service, view specific content, or the like. For example, these toolsmay analyze various factors such as search histories, click-throughs,content viewing, electronic product purchases, electronic shopping cartcontents, social networking posts, etc. to determine what types ofitems/services and/or content a user may be interested in and thenpresent to them corresponding advertisements designed to entice theminto performing an action to reward the advertiser, e.g., make apurchase, view content, etc.

In response, other computing tools have been developed to avoid suchcontent, such as pop-up advertisement blockers, adult content blockers,and the like. These computing tools are keyed to broad categories ofcontent, e.g., adult content, or to particular mechanisms for presentingthe content, e.g., pop-ups, banner ads, etc. For example, through a userinterface, a user may specify the types of content that they areinterested in or the types of content that the user wishes to befiltered out, and these broad categories of content may be filtered orprovided based on the user settings, e.g., a user setting to filter out“M” rated content will filter out all video game, movies, or othercontent that has an associated “M” rating attributed to it by anoversight authority.

SUMMARY

This Summary is provided to introduce a selection of concepts in asimplified form that are further described herein in the DetailedDescription. This Summary is not intended to identify key factors oressential features of the claimed subject matter, nor is it intended tobe used to limit the scope of the claimed subject matter.

In one illustrative embodiment, a method is provided in a dataprocessing system comprising at least one processor and at least onememory. The at least one memory comprises instructions that are executedby the at least one processor to configure the at least one processor toimplement an annotator for annotating content using context-basedsurface forms. The method comprises receiving a dictionary datastructure of surface forms comprising a plurality of regularexpressions. The method further comprises receiving input content. Themechanism further comprises comparing a given span of text in the inputcontent to each regular expression in the dictionary data structure. Themethod further comprises annotating the span of text with a contentindicator corresponding to a content category associated with thedictionary data structure responsive to the given span of text matchinga given regular expression. The method further comprises performing anatural language processing operation on the input content based onresults of the annotation.

In other illustrative embodiments, a computer program product comprisinga computer useable or readable medium having a computer readable programis provided. The computer readable program, when executed on a computingdevice, causes the computing device to perform various ones of, andcombinations of, the operations outlined above with regard to the methodillustrative embodiment.

In yet another illustrative embodiment, a system/apparatus is provided.The system/apparatus may comprise one or more processors and a memorycoupled to the one or more processors. The memory may compriseinstructions which, when executed by the one or more processors, causethe one or more processors to perform various ones of, and combinationsof, the operations outlined above with regard to the method illustrativeembodiment.

These and other features and advantages of the present invention will bedescribed in, or will become apparent to those of ordinary skill in theart in view of, the following detailed description of the exampleembodiments of the present invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE SEVERAL VIEWS OF THE DRAWINGS

The invention, as well as a preferred mode of use and further objectivesand advantages thereof, will best be understood by reference to thefollowing detailed description of illustrative embodiments when read inconjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1A is an example diagram illustrating an interaction of primaryoperational elements of a medical condition content control system inaccordance with one illustrative embodiment in which a filteringapplication is deployed in an end user computing system;

FIG. 1B is an example diagram illustrating an interaction of primaryoperational elements of a medical condition content control system inaccordance with one illustrative embodiment in which a filteringapplication is deployed in a content server computing system;

FIG. 2 is a flowchart outlining an example operation of a medicalcondition content control system in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment;

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a distributed data processing system inwhich a medical condition content control system and cognitive computingsystem for determining medical conditions associated with users may beimplemented in accordance with one illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a user specific content indicatordictionary generator for consolidating dictionary data structures inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a surface form editor for context-basedsurface form generation for cognitive system dictionaries in accordancewith an illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a mechanism for annotating content usingcontext-based surface forms for cognitive system dictionaries inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment;

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating operation of a mechanism for dynamiccreation and expansion of cognitive model dictionaries based on analysisof natural language content in accordance with an illustrativeembodiment;

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of an example data processing system in whichaspects of the illustrative embodiments are implemented;

FIG. 9 illustrates an example of a cognitive system processing pipelineused to process an input request in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment;

FIG. 10 depicts a cloud computing environment according an illustrativeembodiment; and

FIG. 11 depicts abstraction model layers according to an illustrativeembodiment.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

The illustrative embodiments provide mechanisms for automatic contentavoidance based on automatically determined medical conditions of auser. The mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments integrate cognitivecomputing evaluations of the electronic medical records of a user todetermine medical conditions afflicting the user, with content filteringor avoidance so as to assist the user in avoiding content that mayexacerbate or perpetuate the user's medical condition(s). That is,content that may affect a user's behavior so as to promote behaviorsthat negatively affect the user's health with regard to the user'spersonal medical condition(s) are filtered/blocked/replaced, whilecontent that may affect a user's behavior so as to promote behaviorsthat are positive and promote improved health of the user with regard totheir personal medical condition(s) are permitted to be accessed by theuser. Thus, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments provide anautomated computing tool for tailoring content filtering automaticallyto the medical conditions of the user.

As noted above, there are computing tools that allow a user to specifywhat content to filter and/or provide to the user through the user'ssetting of preferences, with the settings being based on broadcategories of content. While the user may specify broad types of contentthat they desire to view and/or block, such content filtering isdirected by the user themselves and subject to the user's own behavioralself-control. As a result, these mechanisms are easily circumvented andsubject to the user's own honesty/dishonesty with themselves and withthe content filtering providers, which can be problematic for userssuffering from medical conditions that are tied to their behaviors,e.g., alcoholism, smoking, diabetes, obesity, etc. Unfortunately, usersare inundated with content on a daily basis and users may not be able todetermine a priori which content items have elements that will triggernegative behaviors that will exacerbate or perpetuate their own medicalconditions. Placing the burden on the end user to determine each andevery type of content that may be detrimental to their health is afaulty solution due to human limitations in both knowledge andself-control.

Known content filtering mechanisms do not provide any mechanism forautomatically tailoring the mechanisms to particular individual'smedical condition(s) based on an evaluation of medical information aboutthat individual. That is, individuals may have medical conditions thatmay be exacerbated or perpetuated by the presentation of particularcontent via their computing and/or communication devices which seek totrigger behaviors that, for that particular user, are negative given theuser's personal medical condition(s), but may not be negative for otherusers that are not suffering from the same medical condition(s). Forexample, persons that have alcoholism should avoid content thatreferences alcohol, obese individuals should avoid content referencinghigh caloric or unhealthy food choices, a smoker should avoid contentcontaining references to tobacco products, etc. These types of contentmay exacerbate or perpetuate the medical condition(s) of the user asthey expose the user to products/services that play to the negativebehavioral aspects associated with the medical condition of the user.While the content provider may be purposefully attempting to targetindividuals with such medical condition(s), and other users may not betriggered by such content, such content may be a trigger for particularusers whose medical condition(s) make them susceptible. That is, suchconsiderations of content that are triggers for behaviors thatnegatively affect a user's medical condition(s) are personal to eachuser based on their own specific medical condition(s).

The present invention provides a mechanism for automatically learning,through a cognitive computing evaluation of a user's electronic medicalrecords, social networking posts or communications, electronic messages,etc., a user's medical condition(s), correlating that information withindicators of content to avoid based on user behavioral aspects of theuser's medical condition(s), and content control applications foraccessing content so as to avoid or replace the negative influencecontent with positive influence content that will not tend to cause userbehavior that exacerbates or perpetuates the user's medicalcondition(s). The illustrative embodiments of the present invention usea cognitive computing system to evaluate a user's medical conditionbased on a cognitive evaluation of the user's electronic medicalrecords, social networking interactions, electronic mail communications,instant messaging communications, and the like, which are collectivelyreferred to herein as “patient information.” That is, “patientinformation” comprises data from any source computing system thatprovides structured or unstructured content about, or generated by, auser of interest and may contain information that, through a cognitivecomputing operation of a cognitive computing system, indicates a medicalcondition of the user of interest.

For example, electronic medical records (EMRs) associated with the user,and which may come from a variety of sources including doctor officecomputing systems, hospital computing systems, pharmacy computingsystems, medical insurance provider computing systems, etc., providemedical information about the user which can be processed by thecognitive computing system, such as via natural language processingmechanisms, to extract features indicative of medical conditions, e.g.,medical codes, medical terms/phrases in notes entered by medicalpersonnel, vital sign values, medical lab results (both numeric valuesand/or textual descriptions), features of medical images obtainedthrough image analysis, etc. Similarly, social networking posts tosocial networking websites may be processed via natural languageprocessing and the like to extract features that are indicators ofmedical conditions, e.g., a user may complain of insomnia on a socialnetworking website even though their EMR may not have yet documentedinsomnia as a medical condition for the user. The features extractedfrom the patient information from these various sources may be evaluatedby the cognitive computing system to draw inferences from these featuresas to the probability that particular medical conditions apply to theuser and thereby correlates combinations of extracted features withparticular medical conditions. If the probability value is greater thana predetermined threshold probability, it may be determined that themedical condition(s) apply to the user.

It should be appreciated that temporal considerations may also beincluded in the determination of medical condition(s) associated withthe user since a number of medical conditions may be long term medicalconditions while other medical conditions may be more fleeting, e.g.,insomnia may be a temporary condition while diabetes is a more long termcondition. Thus, a cognitive evaluation of patient information may betaken into consideration the timestamps and/or temporal indicatorsassociated with patient information when determining what medicalcondition(s) apply to the patient currently. Hence, the evaluation ofwhat medical condition(s) apply to the patient is performed with regardto the current time and such evaluations may be performed periodicallyover time so as to dynamically adjust the understanding of what medicalcondition(s) are associated with the user as the user's healthimproves/declines over time.

The medical condition(s) identified through the cognitive computingsystem's evaluation of the patient information may be any condition thataffects the physical and/or mental health of the user, including medicalproblems (e.g., obesity, diabetes, heart conditions, high bloodpressure, etc.), behavior conditions (e.g., negative habits, overeating,alcoholism, drug addiction, etc.) and psychological conditions (e.g.,phobias, compulsions, etc.). These medical condition(s) may have humanbehaviors associated with them that may exacerbate or perpetuate themedical condition. For example, obesity may have human behaviors such aseating unhealthy foods, a sedentary lifestyle, and the like, that areassociated with the medical condition. It is these human behaviors thatthe content filtering/blocking/replacing of the illustrative embodimentsseeks to influence by exposing the user to content that promotesproducts, services, information, entertainment, etc. that results inuser behaviors that tend to improve the user's health while demoting oravoiding content that results in user behaviors that tend to perpetuateor worsen a medical condition.

The medical conditions associated with the user are correlated withmedical conditions for which data structures have been defined thatspecify the particular terms/phrases, metadata, data annotations, orother indicators of content which are indicative of negative/positivecontent for the user. Negative content is content that has beendetermined to be likely to promote behaviors, purchases, activities, orother actions by the user that will negatively impact the user'sphysical or mental health, e.g., temptations, or otherwise perpetuatethe user's medical condition. Positive content is content that isdetermined to be likely to promote behaviors, purchases, activities, orother actions by the user that will positively impact the user'sphysical or mental health. These term/phrases, metadata, dataannotations, etc. are referred to herein as content indicators and mayinclude both positive content indicators and negative contentindicators. Thus, by correlating the medical conditions with contentindicator data structures specifying the positive and/or negativecontent indicators, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodimentsdetermine what to look for when identifying positive/negative contentthat is attempting to be presented to a user having the correspondingmedical conditions.

A user specific content indicator dictionary (USCID) data structurespecifying the particular negative/positive content indicators for theuser's medical condition(s) is generated for the specific user based onthe correlation of the medical conditions of the user with thepredefined content indicator data structures. The USCID data structuremay differ from the content indicator data structures in that it may bea combination of multiple content indicator data structures depending onhow many medical conditions the user is identified as having. In somecases, the USCID data structure may be the same as a single contentindicator data structure, e.g., the only medical condition determinedfor the user is “smoker” based on an analysis of the user's patientinformation, e.g., results of an online medical questionnaire mayinclude an answer from the user indicating the user has smoked withinthe last 2 months. In other cases, the user may be determined to havemultiple medical conditions, e.g., diabetes, smoker, and obesity, inwhich case the USCID data structure may comprise content indicators frommultiple content indicator data structures, each associated with adifferent medical condition determined to be afflicting the user.

The USCID data structure may be installed in specific applicationsexecuting on the user's client computing device, associated with theuser's account at a server computing device, provided in an agentapplication on the client computing device, or otherwise associated withapplications used to access content. These applications may comprisevarious mechanisms for accessing content, such as Internet browserapplications, video playback applications, electronic mail applications,instant messaging applications, social networking website application,and the like. These various applications may be provided with interfacesthrough which they are able to access the USCID data structure for theuser and control presentation of content to the user byfiltering/replacing content matching negative content indicators andincluding content matching positive content indicators in the contentthat is accessed by the user via the corresponding application.

In some embodiments, the USCID data structure is used by a dedicatedfiltering application executing on the corresponding computing device,e.g., client computing device or server computing device, and contenttraffic flowing to/from the computing device is examined and filtered,and optionally replaced, based on the USCID data structure for the userto whom the content is directed. That is, a user may log onto orotherwise identify themselves as utilizing a computing device with whichthe content filtering application is operating. In response, the contentfiltering application may retrieve USCID data structures associated withthe user, e.g., from a user account associated with the contentfiltering application. If the USCID data structure has not been updatedwithin a predetermined period of time, then an update of the USCID datastructure may be initiated by performing again a cognitive computingsystem analysis of the patient information for the user to determine theuser's current medical condition(s) and correlating those with contentindicator data structures, e.g., the user's medical conditions may havechanged since a last update of the USCID data structure. The USCID datastructure for the user is then installed in the content filteringapplication for use during a current communication session so as tofilter content flowing to the user via the computing device.

With regard to the filtering, the content indicators in the USCID datastructure are used to compare with content indicators identified incontent through a processing of the content prior to it being output tothe user. For example, the metadata for the content may be analyzed toextract any terms/phrases or other content indicators, if the contentcomprises text, the text may be analyzed using natural languageprocessing to extract terms/phrases indicative of content, if thecontent comprises an image, image analysis may be applied to determinewhat objects are present in the image and categorize them with regard tocontent indicators, etc. Thus, content indicators extracted from thecontent may be compared to the content indicators present in the USCIDdata structure to determine if there are any matches. Based on whetheror not the match is a negative content indicator or positive contentindicator match, different filtering/replacement operations may beperformed. For example, if the match is a negative content indicatormatch, then the content may be blocked or filtered out such that it isnot output to the user. Portions of the content that are not associatedwith the negative content indicator may still be provided to the user.If the match is a positive content indicator match, then the content maybe permitted to be output to the user.

In some cases, content matching negative content indicators may bereplaced with content matching positive content indicators. That is,content providers may register their content with the filter applicationprovider or content filter service provider as alternatives to negativecontent and may specify the positive content indicators with which theircontent corresponds. A mapping of negative content indicators andcorresponding positive content indicators may be provided that indicatesfor particular negative content indicator a positive content indicatorthat can be used to replace the content associated with the negativecontent indicator. Thus, if a negative content indicator is matched bycontent that is to be provided to the user, the negative contentindicator may be mapped to a positive content indicator, which may thenbe used to search for alternative content to be output to the user. Thealternative content may then be swapped in as a replacement for thecontent corresponding to the negative content indicator, e.g., for auser having diabetes, an advertisement for a sugary product, e.g., acandy bar, may be replaced with an advertisement for a healthier andnon-sugary snack, such as nuts.

Thus, for example, in an Internet Browser, advertisements appearing onweb pages may be processed with the mechanisms of the illustrativeembodiments to determine whether the advertisements have negativecontent or positive content for the particular user based on the user'smedical conditions. For example, a user that suffers from alcoholismshould not be exposed to advertisements about vodka, beer, or otheralcoholic beverages, places whose primary business is the sale of suchbeverages, or the like. Similarly, users having diabetes should not bepresented with advertisements specifying sugary foods, users sufferingfrom obesity should not be presented with advertisements for fast food,unhealth snacks, and the like, users that are smokers should haveadvertisements for cigarettes and smoking products filtered out orreplaced, etc. Similar identifying of advertisements that are positivefor the user may be identified and permitted to be accessed by the user,e.g., vegetarian users may be presented with content advertisingvegetarian products, e.g., cookbooks, meat substitutes, etc., diabetesusers may be presented with advertisements directed to controlling bloodsugar levels, etc.

With the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments, the existence ofsuch medical conditions is automatically determined through thecognitive computing system's evaluation of user information, e.g., userelectronic medical records, social networking interactions, electronicmail communications, instant messaging communications, etc. The user mayvoluntarily enroll in automated content filtering based on their medicalconditions so as to allow the mechanisms of the illustrative embodimentsto automatically determine the user's medical conditions and performautomated content filtering and/or replacement based on theautomatically determined user medical conditions. Thus, when thecognitive computing system determines that the user has a particularmedical condition, the corresponding user specific dictionary isgenerated based on the correlation of the medical condition withnegative/positive content indicators, and then the user's specificdictionary is deployed to appropriate content presentation applicationsfor use in filtering/replacing content. In this way, the mechanisms ofthe illustrative embodiments protect the user from content that maynegatively affect the user's physical/mental health and may replace suchcontent with content that positively affects the user's physical/mentalhealth.

In some illustrative embodiments, the filtering of content may beperformed within multi-media content so as to filter out individualportions of the multi-media content from the remainder of the content.For example, within a movie, scenes may be associated with correspondingmetadata that indicates the content of those scenes. Based on thecorrelation of the metadata for the scenes with the user's dictionary,some scenes in the movie may be filtered out, e.g., skipped duringplayback, and the like. For example, scenes depicting drug use, scenesdepicting smoking, or the like, may be automatically filtered out orskipped during playback for users having corresponding medicalconditions. Thus, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments may beintegrated with other currently existing or later developed computertools for such media content filtering including, for example,Clearplay®, Vidangel®, or the like. For example, the USCID datastructures may be used to configure such media content filtering toolsettings so as to inform the tool what content to filter out or blockfrom viewing by the particular user. In this way, the media contentfiltering is automatically configured according to the sensitivities ofthe particular medical conditions associated with the user. As notedabove, this determination may be dynamically updated such that the mediacontent filtering tool is dynamically reconfigured as the medicalconditions currently afflicting the user change over time.

Thus, with the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments, automatedcomputing tools are provided for determining a user's medicalconditions, what content indicators correspond to negative/positiveinfluences on the user's determined medical conditions, and then usingthese indicators to automatically filter and/or replace portions ofcontent presented to a user so as to minimize negative influences on theuser's physical/mental health while promoting positive influences on theuser's physical/mental health. With the mechanisms of the illustrativeembodiments, the user need only assent to the general use of computingtools to assist them in improving or maintaining the user'sphysical/mental health and the automated computing tools may then makethe determinations as to what content negatively/positively influencesthe particular medical conditions of the user as determined throughautomated cognitive analysis of the user's information. In someillustrative embodiments, greater controls may be presented to the userso that they can more specifically identify what control they arewilling to hand over to the automated computing tools, such as via auser interface or the like that provides user selectable options forproviding permissions both with regard to the filtering/replacement ofcontent and with regard to accessing particular types and/or sources ofuser information in order to determine medical conditions affecting theuser.

Before beginning the discussion of the various aspects of theillustrative embodiments in more detail, it should first be appreciatedthat throughout this description the term “mechanism” will be used torefer to elements of the present invention that perform variousoperations, functions, and the like. A “mechanism,” as the term is usedherein, may be an implementation of the functions or aspects of theillustrative embodiments in the form of an apparatus, a procedure, or acomputer program product. In the case of a procedure, the procedure isimplemented by one or more devices, apparatus, computers, dataprocessing systems, or the like. In the case of a computer programproduct, the logic represented by computer code or instructions embodiedin or on the computer program product is executed by one or morehardware devices in order to implement the functionality or perform theoperations associated with the specific “mechanism.” Thus, themechanisms described herein may be implemented as specialized hardware,software executing on general purpose hardware, software instructionsstored on a medium such that the instructions are readily executable byspecialized or general-purpose hardware, a procedure or method forexecuting the functions, or a combination of any of the above.

The present description and claims may make use of the terms “a”, “atleast one of”, and “one or more of” with regard to particular featuresand elements of the illustrative embodiments. It should be appreciatedthat these terms and phrases are intended to state that there is atleast one of the particular feature or element present in the particularillustrative embodiment, but that more than one can also be present.That is, these terms/phrases are not intended to limit the descriptionor claims to a single feature/element being present or require that aplurality of such features/elements be present. To the contrary, theseterms/phrases only require at least a single feature/element with thepossibility of a plurality of such features/elements being within thescope of the description and claims.

Moreover, it should be appreciated that the use of the term “engine,” ifused herein with regard to describing embodiments and features of theinvention, is not intended to be limiting of any particularimplementation for accomplishing and/or performing the actions, steps,processes, etc., attributable to and/or performed by the engine. Anengine may be, but is not limited to, software, hardware and/or firmwareor any combination thereof that performs the specified functionsincluding, but not limited to, any use of a general and/or specializedprocessor in combination with appropriate software loaded or stored in amachine-readable memory and executed by the processor. Further, any nameassociated with a particular engine is, unless otherwise specified, forpurposes of convenience of reference and not intended to be limiting toa specific implementation. Additionally, any functionality attributed toan engine may be equally performed by multiple engines, incorporatedinto and/or combined with the functionality of another engine of thesame or different type, or distributed across one or more engines ofvarious configurations.

In addition, it should be appreciated that the following descriptionuses a plurality of various examples for various elements of theillustrative embodiments to further illustrate example implementationsof the illustrative embodiments and to aid in the understanding of themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. These examples intended tobe non-limiting and are not exhaustive of the various possibilities forimplementing the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments. It will beapparent to those of ordinary skill in the art in view of the presentdescription that there are many other alternative implementations forthese various elements that may be utilized in addition to, or inreplacement of, the examples provided herein without departing from thespirit and scope of the present invention.

The present invention may be a system, a method, and/or a computerprogram product. The computer program product may include a computerreadable storage medium (or media) having computer readable programinstructions thereon for causing a processor to carry out aspects of thepresent invention.

The computer readable storage medium can be a tangible device that canretain and store instructions for use by an instruction executiondevice. The computer readable storage medium may be, for example, but isnot limited to, an electronic storage device, a magnetic storage device,an optical storage device, an electromagnetic storage device, asemiconductor storage device, or any suitable combination of theforegoing. A non-exhaustive list of more specific examples of thecomputer readable storage medium includes the following: a portablecomputer diskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), aread-only memory (ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROMor Flash memory), a static random access memory (SRAM), a portablecompact disc read-only memory (CD-ROM), a digital versatile disk (DVD),a memory stick, a floppy disk, a mechanically encoded device such aspunch-cards or raised structures in a groove having instructionsrecorded thereon, and any suitable combination of the foregoing. Acomputer readable storage medium, as used herein, is not to be construedas being transitory signals per se, such as radio waves or other freelypropagating electromagnetic waves, electromagnetic waves propagatingthrough a waveguide or other transmission media (e.g., light pulsespassing through a fiber-optic cable), or electrical signals transmittedthrough a wire.

Computer readable program instructions described herein can bedownloaded to respective computing/processing devices from a computerreadable storage medium or to an external computer or external storagedevice via a network, for example, the Internet, a local area network, awide area network and/or a wireless network. The network may comprisecopper transmission cables, optical transmission fibers, wirelesstransmission, routers, firewalls, switches, gateway computers and/oredge servers. A network adapter card or network interface in eachcomputing/processing device receives computer readable programinstructions from the network and forwards the computer readable programinstructions for storage in a computer readable storage medium withinthe respective computing/processing device.

Computer readable program instructions for carrying out operations ofthe present invention may be assembler instructions,instruction-set-architecture (ISA) instructions, machine instructions,machine dependent instructions, microcode, firmware instructions,state-setting data, or either source code or object code written in anycombination of one or more programming languages, including an objectoriented programming language such as Java, Smalltalk, C++ or the like,and conventional procedural programming languages, such as the “C”programming language or similar programming languages. The computerreadable program instructions may execute entirely on the user'scomputer, partly on the user's computer, as a stand-alone softwarepackage, partly on the user's computer and partly on a remote computeror entirely on the remote computer or server. In the latter scenario,the remote computer may be connected to the user's computer through anytype of network, including a local area network (LAN) or a wide areanetwork (WAN), or the connection may be made to an external computer(for example, through the Internet using an Internet Service Provider).In some embodiments, electronic circuitry including, for example,programmable logic circuitry, field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA), orprogrammable logic arrays (PLA) may execute the computer readableprogram instructions by utilizing state information of the computerreadable program instructions to personalize the electronic circuitry,in order to perform aspects of the present invention.

Aspects of the present invention are described herein with reference toflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams of methods, apparatus(systems), and computer program products according to embodiments of theinvention. It will be understood that each block of the flowchartillustrations and/or block diagrams, and combinations of blocks in theflowchart illustrations and/or block diagrams, can be implemented bycomputer readable program instructions.

These computer readable program instructions may be provided to aprocessor of a general purpose computer, special purpose computer, orother programmable data processing apparatus to produce a machine, suchthat the instructions, which execute via the processor of the computeror other programmable data processing apparatus, create means forimplementing the functions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or blockdiagram block or blocks. These computer readable program instructionsmay also be stored in a computer readable storage medium that can directa computer, a programmable data processing apparatus, and/or otherdevices to function in a particular manner, such that the computerreadable storage medium having instructions stored therein comprises anarticle of manufacture including instructions which implement aspects ofthe function/act specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram blockor blocks.

The computer readable program instructions may also be loaded onto acomputer, other programmable data processing apparatus, or other deviceto cause a series of operational steps to be performed on the computer,other programmable apparatus or other device to produce a computerimplemented process, such that the instructions which execute on thecomputer, other programmable apparatus, or other device implement thefunctions/acts specified in the flowchart and/or block diagram block orblocks.

The flowchart and block diagrams in the Figures illustrate thearchitecture, functionality, and operation of possible implementationsof systems, methods, and computer program products according to variousembodiments of the present invention. In this regard, each block in theflowchart or block diagrams may represent a module, segment, or portionof instructions, which comprises one or more executable instructions forimplementing the specified logical function(s). In some alternativeimplementations, the functions noted in the block may occur out of theorder noted in the figures. For example, two blocks shown in successionmay, in fact, be executed substantially concurrently, or the blocks maysometimes be executed in the reverse order, depending upon thefunctionality involved. It will also be noted that each block of theblock diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, and combinations of blocksin the block diagrams and/or flowchart illustration, can be implementedby special purpose hardware-based systems that perform the specifiedfunctions or acts or carry out combinations of special purpose hardwareand computer instructions.

As noted above, the present invention provides a mechanism forautomatically determining the medical conditions associated with a userand associating those medical conditions with content indicators thatindicate which types of content have positive/negative influences onthose medical conditions. These content indicators are then used tofilter/block/replace content that is attempting to be output to the userso as to promote positive influence content while minimizing negativeinfluence content.

FIG. 1A is an example diagram illustrating an interaction of primaryoperational elements of a medical condition content control system inaccordance with one illustrative embodiment in which a filteringapplication is deployed in an end user computing system. As shown inFIG. 1A, the primary operational elements comprise the medical conditioncontent control system 100, a cognitive computing system 110, and adeployed content filtering application 122. These elements are shown asseparate elements in FIG. 1A which may be implemented on the same ordifferent computing devices. For example, the cognitive computing system110 may be implemented in a first server computing system which operatesto evaluate patient information 112 based on knowledge resources presentin the corpora 114 using trained predictive models (PMs), as describedin greater detail hereafter. The medical condition content controlsystem 100 may be implemented on a second server computing system,potentially remotely located from the first server computing system, andoperates to take the medical conditions identified by the cognitivecomputing system 110 and determining which content indicators apply tothe medical conditions of the user so as to generate and distribute auser specific content indicator dictionary (USCID) data structure 124for a user to appropriate computing devices in which content filteringapplications 122 are deployed. In some illustrative embodiments, thefirst and second server computing devices may be the same servercomputing device implementing both the cognitive computing system 110and the medical condition content control system 100. In still otherillustrative embodiments, the cognitive computing system 110, medicalcondition content control system 100, and content filtering application122 may be implemented in the same computing device or computing systemwhich may be a server computing system or an end user computing system,such as user computing system 120.

The various computing systems/devices, e.g., cognitive computing system110, medical condition content control system 100, and user computingsystem 120, as well as other computing systems/devices such as contentprovider computing systems 130, patient information sources 112, andcorpora 114 providing computing systems, may be in data communicationwith one another via one or more computing networks 140. Thus, thecommunication pathways represented by arrows in FIG. 1A may in fact bedata communication pathways that flow through the one or more networks140. These communication pathways may implement communicationinterfaces, data security mechanisms, e.g., encryption/decryption, andthe like, to facilitate secure communications where necessary so as toensure the privacy of data associated with a user.

As shown in FIG. 1A, a user of a user computing system 120 may log ontoor otherwise access the medical condition content control system 100 soas to register with the medical condition content control system 100 forautomated medical condition content filtering/blocking/replacement. Aspart of the registration process, the user may enter information aboutthemselves, including identifiers which may be used to access patientinformation for the user from various patient information sources 112.The registration process may further include the user assenting to legalrequirements to allow access to the user's patient information and itsuse in performing the medical condition contentfiltering/blocking/replacement. The registration process may alsoinclude answering questions in one or more medical conditionquestionnaires or the like, so as to establish a baseline understandingof the user's medical condition at the time of registration, which maythen be modified or augmented by the results of the cognitive computingoperations performed by the cognitive computing system 110 on thepatient information for the user from the patient information sources112 using the knowledge resources from the corpora 114.

Responsive to the registration operation being complete, or at varioustimes when dynamic updating of medical conditions associated with a useris appropriate, e.g., after a predetermined period of time since a lastupdate of the user's medical conditions, the cognitive computing system110 is employed to determine what medical conditions are associated witha registered user. The cognitive computing system 110 comprises one ormore predictive computer models (PMs) that have been trained through amachine learning training operation based on the corpora 114 whichincludes electronic documents that may comprise content of medicalguidelines, medical trials reports, medical journals and other sourcesof medical knowledge.

The cognitive computing system 110 obtains patient information from thevarious patient information sources 112, extracts features from thispatient information, and applies the knowledge learned through trainingof the PMs from the corpora 114 to thereby learn a health state of auser, e.g., the medical condition(s) associated with the user. Thecognitive computing system 110 is a computing system that implements atechnology platform that is based on scientific principles of artificialintelligence and signal processing. Examples of such technologyplatforms encompass machine learning, machine reasoning, naturallanguage processing, speech recognition, computer vision (objectrecognition), human-computer interaction, dialog and narrativegeneration, and the like. Thus, the cognitive computing system maycomprise a machine learning mechanism, employing one or more predictivemodels (PMs), which may be used to learn associations of featuresextracted from patient information that are indicative of particularmedical conditions. These predictive models may comprise any of avariety of different machine learning or deep learning mechanisms whichmay be trained through a variety of machine learning techniques.

As an overview, a cognitive system is a specialized computer system, orset of computer systems, configured with hardware and/or software logic(in combination with hardware logic upon which the software executes) toemulate human cognitive functions. These cognitive systems applyhuman-like characteristics to conveying and manipulating ideas which,when combined with the inherent strengths of digital computing, cansolve problems with high accuracy and resilience on a large scale. Acognitive system performs one or more computer-implemented cognitiveoperations that approximate a human thought process as well as enablepeople and machines to interact in a more natural manner so as to extendand magnify human expertise and cognition. A cognitive system comprisesartificial intelligence logic, such as natural language processing (NLP)based logic, for example, and machine learning logic, which may beprovided as specialized hardware, software executed on hardware, or anycombination of specialized hardware and software executed on hardware.The logic of the cognitive system implements the cognitive operation(s),examples of which include, but are not limited to, question answering,identification of related concepts within different portions of contentin a corpus, intelligent search algorithms, such as Internet web pagesearches, for example, medical diagnostic and treatment recommendations,and other types of recommendation generation, e.g., items of interest toa particular user, potential new contact recommendations, or the like.

It should be appreciated that even though the cognitive computing systemattempts to approximate or emulate the human thought processes, the waythat computers operate is significantly different than the human minddue to the nature of computers requiring explicit instructions in orderto perform operations. For example, while a human mind may see a pictureof a cat and be able to intuitively know that the picture is one of acat, a cognitive computing system performing image recognitionoperations must have logic and be trained to recognize certaincombinations of characteristics of the image data as representative of acat and properly classify it as such. Thus, while human thoughtprocesses may be emulated, the computer operation is a completelydifferent operation from that of a human mind, even though the resultmay appear to be similar. Ingenuity is required to make a cognitivecomputing system emulate human thought processes due to this fundamentaldifference in the way a human mind and a computer operate.

IBM Watson™ is an example of one such cognitive computing system whichcan process human readable language, digital images in someimplementations, audible inputs in some implementations, and the like,and generate cognitive operation results, e.g., classifications of inputdata, recognition of objects in digital images, determinations ofoperations to be performed based on input data, recommendations forsubsequent action, etc. based on inferences that the cognitive computingsystem generates from the features extracted from the various inputs andreference data processed by the cognitive computing system based on itsmachine learning training. In the realm of processing human readablelanguage, in some implementations IBM Watson™ may evaluate unstructurednatural language content in text passages and identify inferencesbetween text passages with human-like high accuracy at speeds far fasterthan human beings and on a larger scale. In general, cognitive computingsystems, depending on the specific implementation, are able to performthe following functions: navigate the complexities of human language andunderstanding; ingest and process vast amounts of structured andunstructured data; generate and evaluate hypotheses; weigh and evaluateresponses that are based only on relevant evidence; providesituation-specific advice, insights, and guidance; improve knowledge andlearn with each iteration and interaction through machine learningprocesses; enable decision making at the point of impact (contextualguidance); scale in proportion to the task; extend and magnify humanexpertise and cognition; identify resonating, human-like attributes andtraits from natural language; deduce various language specific oragnostic attributes from natural language; high degree of relevantrecollection from data points (images, text, voice) (memorization andrecall); predict and sense with situational awareness that mimic humancognition based on experiences; answer questions based on naturallanguage and specific evidence.

As shown in FIG. 1A, in response to the user's registration with themedical condition content control system 100, at periodic times whenmedical condition information may be determined to be “stale”, e.g.,after a predetermined amount of time since a last update of the user'smedical conditions, or in response to a trigger event, such as an updateto the user's electronic medical records, the medical condition contentcontrol system 100 sends a medical condition request to the cognitivecomputing system 110 that specifics the identity of the user and setsforth a request for updated medical condition information for that user.The cognitive computing system 110 retrieves the patient information forthe user from the patient information sources 112 and processes thepatient information via the predictive models to determine which medicalconditions apply to the user based on the current state of the patientinformation. The predictive models of the cognitive computing system 110may be specifically trained to identify particular medical conditionssuch that multiple predictive models may be implemented by the cognitivecomputing system 110 and applied to the patient information.

The cognitive computing system 110 compiles the results of theprocessing from the various PMs to generate a listing of medicalconditions that are determined to be associated with the user. Thelisting of medical conditions, which may comprise zero or more medicalconditions, is returned to the medical condition content control system100. The medical condition to content indicator mapping logic 102 of themedical condition content control system 100 maps the medical conditionsidentified by the cognitive computing system 110 as being associatedwith the user are mapped to content indicators by retrieving contentindicator data structures 104 associated with the medical conditions.That is, for each potential medical condition handled by the medicalcondition content control system 100, a predetermined content indicatordata structure 104 is generated and stored for use in mapping contentindicators to medical conditions associated with users. Thus, forexample, a first content indicator data structure 104 may be providedfor type 2 diabetes, a second content indicator data structure 104 maybe provided for obesity, a third content indicator data structure 104may be provided for smoking, etc. The medical conditions in the listingof medical conditions provided by the cognitive computing system 110 arematched or mapped to the corresponding content indicator data structures104 which are then provided to the user specific content indicatordictionary (USCID) generator/distributor 106.

The USCID generator/distributor 106 generates a USCID by combining thecontent indicator data structures 104 that correspond to the medicalconditions associated with the user. The content indicator datastructures 104 comprise content indicators for negative content,positive content, or a combination of negative and positive content. Thecontent indicators may comprise various types of indicators such asspecific text/phrases, medical codes, metadata, or any other indicatorthat specifies a type of content and specifically a type of contentcorresponding to medical conditions. The resulting USCID may be storedin association with the user's account, established during registration,in the USCID and user account storage 108 for later retrieval, update,and providing to content filtering applications.

The USCID generator/distributor 106 may also operate to distribute thegenerated USCID to one or more content filtering applications 122 on oneor more computing systems responsible for providing and/or outputtingcontent. In the depicted example of FIG. 1A, the content filteringapplication 122 is deployed to the user computing system 120 that is thecomputing system operated by the user when accessing content from one ormore content provider computing systems 130 via the network 140. TheUSCID 124 distributed by the USCID generator/distributor 106 isinstalled in the content filtering application 122 which configures thatcontent filtering application 122 to use the content indicators tocontrol the output of content to the user in recognition of the medicalconditions associated with that user. Thus, for example content receivedfrom the content provider computing system 130 may be processed by thecontent filtering application 122 to determine if there are any portionsof content associated with content indicators matching negativeinfluence content indicators in the USCID 124. In such a case, thecontent filtering application 122 may remove, block, or replace suchportions of content prior to outputting the content to the user asoutput 150 with the medical condition filtered content 152.

Thus, with these mechanisms, the output 150 to the user comprisesmedical condition filtered content 152 where content that isautomatically determined to be likely to influence negative behaviors,relative to the medical conditions of the user, are automaticallyremoved, blocked, or replaced with content that is determined to be morelikely to influence positive behaviors. In some cases, the content thatis filtered/blocked may be replaced with placeholder content indicatingthe fact that the original content has been removed and the reasoningwhy the content was removed, e.g., “this content has been removedbecause it may negatively impact your medical condition.” In some cases,the user may be presented with user interface controls whereby the usermay override the content filtering/blocking with regard to theparticular filtered/blocked content, e.g., a user interface element thatis selectable by the user, possibly with the entry of a password,personal identification number, or the like, such that the user mayoverride the content filtering/blocking and the original content maythen be rendered and provided as part of an updated output 150. Whilethis provides a mechanism for avoiding the content filtering/blocking,it requires that the user take active steps to override making the userthink about what they are doing and whether they really want to exposethemselves to something that may be detrimental to their medicalconditions.

In order to obtain such benefits, the user need only register and assentto automated medical condition content controls and allow the automatedsystems to determine which content falls within the categories ofnegative/positive influences for the user's medical conditions. Thisalleviates the burden on users to police the content being provided tothem, which is especially cumbersome in modern computing environmentswhere content is constantly being pushed to end users sometimes withouttheir prior knowledge or consent. While some amount of control is givenup to the automated mechanisms, the automated mechanisms provideprotections that the user may not otherwise be able to enjoy withoutsignificant personal efforts.

As noted above, FIG. 1A depicts one example embodiment in which thecontent filtering application is deployed in the end user computingsystem such that the content filtering/blocking/replacement is performedat the point where the content is being output. FIG. 1B is an examplediagram illustrating an interaction of primary operational elements of amedical condition content control system in accordance with oneillustrative embodiment in which a filtering application is deployed ina content server computing system. By deploying the content filteringapplication in the server computing system, the contentfiltering/blocking/replacement may be performed closer to the sources ofcontent and facilitates the ability to identify replacement content thatis associated with positive content indicators associated with themedical conditions of the user.

The configuration shown in FIG. 1B differs from that of FIG. 1A in thatthe content filtering application 162 is implemented in server 160 andfurther comprises an alternative content logic 164 for selectingalternative content for content having content indicators that matchnegative influence content indicators specified in the USCID 124 for auser. The server 160 may be a content provider server which operates toprovide content to end users via their user computing systems 170 andone or more data networks 140. The server 160, in some embodiments, maybe a gateway server that serves as an intermediary between the usercomputing systems 170 and content provider servers. The server 160, insome embodiments, may be an Internet service provider computing systemthat provides a pathway by which user computing systems 170 are able toaccess content on the Internet.

In the depicted embodiment in FIG. 1B, similar to the description ofFIG. 1A above, the USCID 124 is generated by the medical conditioncontent control system 100 and distributed to the content filteringapplication 162. When content is flowing to the user computing system170 through the server 160, the content filtering application 162compares content indicators associated with the content to contentindicators specified in the USCID 124. The USCID 124 may comprise bothnegative content indicators and positive content indicators. In responseto content having content indicators matching a negative contentindicator, the positive content indicators may then be used by thealternative content logic 164 to select alternative content, havingcontent indicators matching positive content indicators in the USCID124, to replace the content associated with the negative contentindicator. The alternative content may be pre-registered with the server160 and its corresponding content indicators registered with thealternative content logic 164 of the content filtering application 162.As a result, the matching of positive content indicators in the USCID124 with content indicators of the pre-registered content may beperformed and the corresponding content retrieved and used to replacethe negative influence content. In some illustrative embodiments, theparticular positive content indicators used may be those that correspondto the same medical condition as the negative content indicator matchedby the content that is filtered out/blocked.

Thus, with the mechanisms of this illustrative embodiment, not only isnegative influence content filtered/blocked based on the medicalconditions associated with the user, but this negative influence contentmay be replaced with positive influence content that is determined tohave a positive influence on user behaviors associated with the user'smedical conditions. Hence, not only does the system help avoid negativeinfluences, but also serves to promote positive influences that arespecifically tailored to the particular medical conditions that areassociated with the specific user. It can be seen that through themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments, customized or tailoredfiltering/blocking/replacement of content is performed based on eachuser's own individual combination of medical conditions. Thus, thefiltering/blocking/replacement may be different for each user dependingon their own specific medical conditions.

FIG. 2 is a flowchart outlining an example operation of a medicalcondition content control system in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment. As shown in FIG. 2, the operation starts with the initiationof a medical condition determination for a specified user (step 210).For example, this initiation may be in response to a user registeringwith the medical condition content control system, an expiration of apredetermined time period from a previous update of the medicalconditions of a user, or in response to a particular triggering event,e.g., updating of an electronic medical record (EMR) or the like. Inresponse to the initiating of the medical condition determination, thecognitive computing system performs an evaluation of patient informationassociated with the specified user to identify the medical condition(s)associated with the user (step 220).

Based on the identified medical condition(s) associated with the user asdetermined by the cognitive computing system, the medical condition(s)are mapped to corresponding content indicator data structures (step230). The mapped content indicator data structures are used to generatea user specific content indicator dictionary (USCID) data structure forthe user (step 240). The USCID is stored in association with the useraccount and distributed to one or more content filtering applicationsexecuting on one or more computing devices used to provide/outputcontent to the user (step 250). The USCID is used to configure thecontent filtering application(s) and are a basis forfiltering/blocking/replacement of content that matches contentindicators present in the USCID (step 260). The operation thenterminates.

As is apparent from the above description, the present invention is animproved computer tool that specifically improves the way in whichelectronic content is provided to users via their computing devices byproviding an automated content filtering/blocking/replacement mechanismbased on a user's medical conditions. The illustrative embodiments maybe utilized in many different types of data processing environments. Inorder to provide a context for the description of the specific elementsand functionality of the illustrative embodiments, FIGS. 3-6 areprovided hereafter as example environments in which aspects of theillustrative embodiments may be implemented. It should be appreciatedthat FIGS. 3-6 are only examples and are not intended to assert or implyany limitation with regard to the environments in which aspects orembodiments of the present invention may be implemented. Manymodifications to the depicted environments may be made without departingfrom the spirit and scope of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram of a distributed data processing system inwhich a medical condition content control system and cognitive computingsystem for determining medical conditions associated with users may beimplemented in accordance with one illustrative embodiment. As shown inFIG. 3, the cognitive system 300 implements a request processingpipeline 308. The request processing pipeline 308 operates on structuredand/or unstructured requests, such as a medical condition request fromthe medical condition content control system 100. The cognitive system300 is implemented on one or more computing devices 304A-D (comprisingone or more processors and one or more memories, and potentially anyother computing device elements generally known in the art includingbuses, storage devices, communication interfaces, and the like)connected to the computer network 302. For purposes of illustrationonly, FIG. 3 depicts the cognitive system 300 being implemented oncomputing device 304A only, but as noted above the cognitive system 300may be distributed across multiple computing devices, such as aplurality of computing devices 304A-D. The network 302 includes multiplecomputing devices 304A-D, which may operate as server computing devices,and 310-312 which may operate as client computing devices, incommunication with each other and with other devices or components viaone or more wired and/or wireless data communication links, where eachcommunication link comprises one or more of wires, routers, switches,transmitters, receivers, or the like. In some illustrative embodiments,the cognitive system 300 and network 302 enables request processingfunctionality for one or more cognitive system users, such as medicalcondition content control system 100. The cognitive system 300 andnetwork 302 may provide other types of cognitive operations including,but not limited to, request processing and cognitive response generationwhich may take many different forms depending upon the desiredimplementation, e.g., cognitive information retrieval,training/instruction of users, cognitive evaluation of data, or thelike. Other embodiments of the cognitive system 300 may be used withcomponents, systems, sub-systems, and/or devices other than those thatare depicted herein.

The cognitive system 300 is configured to implement a request processingpipeline 308 that receives inputs from various sources. The requests maybe posed in the form of a natural language question, natural languagerequest for information, natural language request for the performance ofa cognitive operation, structured requests, or the like. For example,the cognitive system 300 receives input from the network 302, a corpusor corpora of electronic documents 306, cognitive system users, and/orother data and other possible sources of input. In one embodiment, someor all of the inputs to the cognitive system 300 are routed through thenetwork 302. The various computing devices 304A-D on the network 302include access points for content creators and cognitive system users.Some of the computing devices 304A-D include devices for a databasestoring the corpus or corpora of data 306 (which is shown as a separateentity in FIG. 3 for illustrative purposes only). Portions of the corpusor corpora of data 306 may also be provided on one or more other networkattached storage devices, in one or more databases, or other computingdevices not explicitly shown in FIG. 3. The network 302 includes localnetwork connections and remote connections in various embodiments, suchthat the cognitive system 300 may operate in environments of any size,including local and global, e.g., the Internet.

In one embodiment, the content creator creates content in a document ofthe corpus or corpora of data 306 for use as part of a corpus of datawith the cognitive system 300. The document includes any file, text,article, or source of data for use in the cognitive system 300.Cognitive system users access the cognitive system 300 via a networkconnection or an Internet connection to the network 302, and inputrequests to the cognitive system 300 that are processed based on thecontent in the corpus or corpora of data 306. The cognitive system 300parses and interprets the request via a pipeline 308, and provides aresponse to the cognitive system user, e.g., medical condition contentcontrol system 100, containing one or more responses to the request,results of processing the request, or the like. For example, inaccordance with one or more illustrative embodiments, the response fromthe cognitive system 300 comprises one or more medical conditions thatare determined to be associated with a user specified in the inputrequest. In some embodiments, the cognitive system 300 provides aresponse to users in a ranked list of candidate responses while in otherillustrative embodiments, the cognitive system 300 provides a singlefinal response or a listing of final responses, e.g., a listing ofmedical conditions associated with the user specified in the request.

The cognitive system 300 implements the pipeline 308 which comprises aplurality of stages for processing an input request based on informationobtained from the corpus or corpora of data 306. The pipeline 308generates responses for the input request based on the processing of theinput request and the corpus or corpora of data 306. The pipeline 308will be described in greater detail hereafter with regard to FIG. 6.

In some illustrative embodiments, the cognitive system 300 may be theIBM Watson™ cognitive system available from International BusinessMachines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., which is augmented with themechanisms of the illustrative embodiments described hereafter. Asoutlined previously, a pipeline of the IBM Watson™ cognitive systemreceives an input request which it then parses to extract the majorfeatures of the request, which in turn are then used to formulatequeries that are applied to the corpus or corpora of data 306. In oneillustrative embodiment, the corpus or corpora of data 306 comprises thepatient information from patient information sources 112 in FIG. 1A aswell as corpora 114. This information is used by the predictive modelsemployed by the various stages of the pipeline 308 to evaluate extractedfeatures that are indicative of medical conditions associated with theuser. Based on the application of the queries to the corpus or corporaof data 306, a set of hypotheses, or candidate responses, e.g.,candidate medical conditions associated with the user, to the inputrequest, are generated by looking across the corpus or corpora of data306 for portions of the corpus or corpora of data 306 (hereafterreferred to simply as the corpus 306) that have some potential forcontaining a valuable response to the input request. The pipeline 308 ofthe IBM Watson™ cognitive system then performs deep analysis on thelanguage of the input request and the language used in each of theportions of the corpus 306 found during the application of the queriesusing a variety of reasoning algorithms and predictive models.

The scores obtained from the various reasoning algorithms and predictivemodels are then weighted against a statistical model that summarizes alevel of confidence that the pipeline 308 of the IBM Watson™ cognitivesystem 300, in this example, has regarding the evidence that thepotential candidate answer is inferred by the question. This process isrepeated for each of the candidate responses to generate ranked listingof candidate responses which may then be presented to the source of theinput request, e.g., medical condition content control system 100, orfrom which a final answer is selected and presented to the medicalcondition content control system 100. More information about thepipeline 308 of the IBM Watson™ cognitive system 300 may be obtained,for example, from the IBM Corporation website, IBM Redbooks, and thelike. For example, information about the pipeline of the IBM Watson™cognitive system can be found in Yuan et al., “Watson and Healthcare,”IBM developerWorks, 2011 and “The Era of Cognitive Systems: An InsideLook at IBM Watson and How it Works” by Rob High, IBM Redbooks, 2012.

As shown in FIG. 3, the cognitive system 300 operates in conjunctionwith the medical condition content control system 100, which itself maybe implemented as computer logic implemented in specialized hardware,software executed on hardware, or any combination of specializedhardware and software executed on hardware. The medical conditioncontent control system 100 may submit input requests for medicalcondition information to the cognitive system 300 which may thenevaluate the patient information for a user specified in the inputrequest to identify candidate responses representing medical conditionsthat are likely associated with the user. The candidate responses may becompiled into a listing of medical conditions associated with the user,where the medical conditions are those candidate responses havingconfidence scores or probability values that are equal to or abovepredetermined threshold confidence scores or probability values. Theresulting medical conditions are returned to the medical conditioncontent control system 100 which then performs its operations aspreviously described above to generate a USCID and deploy the USCID forcontent filtering/blocking/replacement by the deployed content filteringapplication(s).

Generating Context-Based Surface Forms

The illustrative embodiments provide a mechanism for context-basedsurface form generation for cognitive system dictionaries, such as userspecific content indicator dictionary (USCID) data structures. Forexample, for a combination of medical conditions identified through thecognitive computing system's evaluation of the patient information(e.g., diabetes and heart conditions), behavior conditions (e.g.,overeating and alcoholism) and psychological conditions (e.g.,compulsions), the illustrative embodiments may build a USCID for thepatient with a combination of dictionaries with high-sugar foods, foodswith high saturated fat, and alcohol. That is, the illustrativeembodiment provides a USCID generator that consolidates specificdictionaries of context-based surface forms based on medical conditions,behavior conditions, and psychological conditions of the patient.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a user specific content indicatordictionary generator for consolidating dictionary data structures inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment. User specific contentindicator dictionary (USCID) generator 410 receives dictionary datastructures 405, each representing a dictionary of context-based surfaceforms of content indicators to be suppressed (e.g., sugary foods,alcohol, etc.) or promoted (e.g., whole plant foods, exercise, etc.).USCID generator 410 then consolidates a selected subset of thedictionary data structures 405 based on patient conditions 411 togenerate USCID 415. Like the surface form dictionary data structures405, USCID 415 also comprises context-based surface forms in the form ofregular expressions.

Annotator 420 then uses the USCID 415 to annotate input content 401 togenerate annotated content 425. That is, annotator 420 annotates inputcontent 401 with user specific content indicators such that annotatedcontent 425 can be used to suppress or promote certain content. USCID415 also comprises context-based surface forms in the form of regularexpressions.

The illustrative embodiment provides a mechanism to create surface formsby specifying patterns of regular expressions and corresponding contextsrather than individual terms and their various forms, e.g., plurals,etc. That is, rather than having to specify every possible surface form,the mechanism identifies a regular expression and then the context ofthe regular expression that represents the surface forms of interest tothe particular annotator. Thus, when the annotator operates on contentusing the surface forms, the annotator finds an instance of a regularexpression and analyzes the context of the regular expression todetermine if it is one that should be annotated given the surface form.

For example, the annotator may be given a surface form definition inaccordance with the illustrative embodiment that states that it shouldonly annotate a given regular expression when it is within a particularcontext. For example, the mechanism can annotate the term “will” butonly when it is adjacent to the word “living,” i.e., the regularexpression “will” references the legal document. As another example, theannotator may be given a surface form that specifies to only annotatethe regular expression “to” if it is in the context of a previouslyoccurring term “page,” e.g., “page to” indicating that it is the startof a section of a document.

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a surface form editor for context-basedsurface form generation for cognitive system dictionaries in accordancewith an illustrative embodiment. The user is given an interface atconfiguration time allowing the user to provide surface forms to bematched in unstructured text. The user specifics the surface forms usinguser input 501 to surface form editor 500, which generates surface forms502, which may be associated with an annotation type. These surfaceforms 502 are stored in a file that is specified during runtime so thesurface forms can be processed. The runtime code processes the file andsearches the text for those surface forms. If a given surface form isfound, the runtime code creates an annotation of the associated typeover that span of text.

The illustrative embodiment introduces the ability for the user atconfiguration time to provide, via user input 501, a regular expressionto represent the surface form instead of it being a surface form made upof a static set of characters.

A regular expression (regex), sometimes called a rational expression, isa sequence of characters that define a search pattern. Usually suchpatterns are used by string searching algorithms for “find” or “find andreplace” operations on strings, or for input validation. It is atechnique developed in theoretical computer science and formal languagetheory. Regular expressions are used in search engines, search andreplace dialogs of word processors and text editors, in text processingutilities, and in lexical analysis. Many programming languages provideregex capabilities either built-in or via libraries.

The phrase regular expressions, and consequently, regexes, is often usedto mean the specific, standard textual syntax (distinct from themathematical notation described below) for representing patterns formatching text. Each character in a regular expression (that is, eachcharacter in the string describing its pattern) is either ametacharacter, having a special meaning, or a regular character that hasa literal meaning. For example, in the regex “a.”, a is a literalcharacter which matches just ‘a’, while ‘.’ is a meta character thatmatches every character except a newline. Therefore, this regex matches,for example, ‘a’, ‘ax’, or ‘a0’. Together, metacharacters and literalcharacters can be used to identify text of a given pattern, or process anumber of instances of the text. Pattern matches may vary from a preciseequality to a very general similarity, as controlled by themetacharacters. For example, “.” is a very general pattern, “[a-z]”(match all lower case letters from ‘a’ to ‘z’) is less general, and “a”is a precise pattern (matches just ‘a’). The metacharacter syntax isdesigned specifically to represent prescribed targets in a concise andflexible way to direct the automation of text processing of a variety ofinput data, in a form easy to type using a standard keyboard.

A very simple case of a regular expression in this syntax is to locate aword spelled two different ways in a text editor, the regular expression“seriali[sz]e” matches both “serialise” and “serialize”. Wildcards alsoachieve this, but are more limited in what they can pattern, as theyhave fewer metacharacters and a simple language-base. For example, theregex “[\t]+|[\t]+$” matches excess whitespace at the beginning or endof a line. An advanced regular expression that matches any numeral is“[+−]?(\d+(\.\d+)?|\.\d+)([eE][+−]?\d+)?”. A regex processor translatesa regular expression in the implemented syntax into an internalrepresentation that can be executed and matched against a stringrepresenting the text being searched.

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a mechanism for annotating content usingcontext-based surface forms for cognitive system dictionaries inaccordance with an illustrative embodiment. Annotator 620 receivessurface forms 602, which represent dictionaries for categories ofcontent indicators. For example, a given surface form dictionary 602 mayrepresent a dictionary of sugary foods. Annotator 620 includes regexprocessor 622. In one embodiment, content 601 is unstructured text.Regex processor 622 processes the regular expressions in surface formsdictionaries 602 to match regular expressions to spans of text incontent 601.

If regex processor 622 finds a match of a regular expression to a spanof text, annotator 620 annotates the span of text with a contentindicator corresponding to the dictionary category. This use of regularexpressions allows the user to have much more control and the ability tonot indiscriminately create annotations whenever a specific surface formexists. This also allows the user to create annotations in context andimprove the precision of the annotations.

FIG. 7 is a flowchart illustrating operation of a mechanism forannotating content using context-based surface forms for cognitivesystem dictionaries in accordance with an illustrative embodiment.Operation begins (block 700), and the mechanism selects regularexpressions for selection criteria for one or more dictionaries (block701). A span of text is any span of consecutive characters. Theselection criteria represent a category of content indicators. Themechanism receives input content (block 702) and considers the next spanof text in the input content (block 703). Then, the mechanism comparesthe span of text to each regular expression in the one or moredictionaries (block 704).

In one embodiment, the input content is an advertisement or othercontent that is to be promoted or suppressed. For example, the contentmay be promoted or suppressed based one or more medical conditions ofthe user. Thus, the annotator annotates the content with contentindicators that are used for the promotion or suppression of thecontent.

The mechanism determines whether the span of text matches a regularexpression (block 705). If the mechanism finds a matching regularexpression, then the mechanism annotates the span of text in the inputcontent with a content indicator corresponding to the category of thedictionary containing the regular expression (block 706).

Thereafter, or if the mechanism does not find a match in block 705, themechanism determines whether to consider the next span of text (block706). If there is another span of text to consider, then operationreturns to block 703 to consider the next span of text. If the end ofthe content is reached in block 707, then the mechanism determineswhether to consider the next content (block 708). If there is anothercontent to consider, then operation returns to block 702 to receive thenext input content (block 702). If there is no more content to considerin block 708, then operation ends (block 709).

Consider an annotator called “Named Entity Recognition” and one of theconcepts it is finding is name annotations. In this situation, there isa pattern that indicates the beginning of a name and the end of “name:”For example, the name “Angelenia” is not the base names dictionary;therefore, the annotator would miss the name. However, with thefollowing regex pattern we would get all names that match this pattern:“?i)(?:Name\s*:\s*).*(?=\s*Unit\s*Number)”.

(?i) makes the pattern case-insensitive

(?: indicates a non-capturing group

(?;Name\s*:\s)—matches the word “Name” followed by any number of spacesfollowed by a colon followed by any number of spaces

.* matches any characters

(?=indicates a non-capturing look behind group

(?=\s*Unit\s*Number)—matches any number of spaces followed by “Unit”followed by any number of spaces followed by the word “Number”

Another example involves false positives with “personInd” annotations.There so many things that are named after people and when used in thatcontext they should not be names.

“As an infant, he was initially palliated with the right and modifiedBlalock-Taussig shunt in October of 2002.”

Pattern “Blalock-Taussig(?!\s+shunt)”—this will not matchBlalock-Taussig if this text is followed by “shunt.”

As noted above, the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments arerooted in the computer technology arts and are implemented using logicpresent in such computing or data processing systems. These computing ordata processing systems are specifically configured, either throughhardware, software, or a combination of hardware and software, toimplement the various operations described above. As such, FIG. 8 isprovided as an example of one type of data processing system in whichaspects of the present invention may be implemented. Many other types ofdata processing systems may be likewise configured to specificallyimplement the mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments.

FIG. 8 is a block diagram of an example data processing system in whichaspects of the illustrative embodiments are implemented. Data processingsystem 800 is an example of a computer, such as server 304A or client310 in FIG. 3, in which computer usable code or instructionsimplementing the processes for illustrative embodiments of the presentinvention are located. In one illustrative embodiment, FIG. 8 representsa server computing device, such as a server 304A, which implements acognitive system 300 and QA system pipeline 308 augmented to include theadditional mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments describedhereafter.

In the depicted example, data processing system 800 employs a hubarchitecture including north bridge and memory controller hub (NB/MCH)802 and south bridge and input/output (I/O) controller hub (SB/ICH) 804.Processing unit 806, main memory 808, and graphics processor 810 areconnected to NB/MCH 802. Graphics processor 810 is connected to NB/MCH802 through an accelerated graphics port (AGP).

In the depicted example, local area network (LAN) adapter 812 connectsto SB/ICH 804. Audio adapter 816, keyboard and mouse adapter 820, modem822, read only memory (ROM) 824, hard disk drive (HDD) 826, CD-ROM drive830, universal serial bus (USB) ports and other communication ports 832,and PCI/PCIe devices 834 connect to SB/ICH 804 through bus 838 and bus840. PCI/PCIe devices may include, for example, Ethernet adapters,add-in cards, and PC cards for notebook computers. PCI uses a card buscontroller, while PCIe does not. ROM 824 may be, for example, a flashbasic input/output system (BIOS).

HDD 826 and CD-ROM drive 830 connect to SB/ICH 404 through bus 840. HDD826 and CD-ROM drive 830 may use, for example, an integrated driveelectronics (IDE) or serial advanced technology attachment (SATA)interface. Super I/O (SIO) device 836 is connected to SB/ICH 804.

An operating system runs on processing unit 806. The operating systemcoordinates and provides control of various components within the dataprocessing system 800 in FIG. 8. As a client, the operating system is acommercially available operating system such as Microsoft® Windows 10®.An object-oriented programming system, such as the Java™ programmingsystem, may run in conjunction with the operating system and providescalls to the operating system from Javar™ programs or applicationsexecuting on data processing system 800.

As a server, data processing system 800 may be, for example, an IBM®eServer™ System P® computer system, running the Advanced InteractiveExecutive (AIX®) operating system or the LINUX® operating system. Dataprocessing system 800 may be a symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) systemincluding a plurality of processors in processing unit 806.Alternatively, a single processor system may be employed.

Instructions for the operating system, the object-oriented programmingsystem, and applications or programs are located on storage devices,such as HDD 826, and are loaded into main memory 808 for execution byprocessing unit 806. The processes for illustrative embodiments of thepresent invention are performed by processing unit 806 using computerusable program code, which is located in a memory such as, for example,main memory 808, ROM 824, or in one or more peripheral devices 826 and830, for example.

A bus system, such as bus 838 or bus 840 as shown in FIG. 8, iscomprised of one or more buses. Of course, the bus system may beimplemented using any type of communication fabric or architecture thatprovides for a transfer of data between different components or devicesattached to the fabric or architecture. A communication unit, such asmodem 822 or network adapter 812 of FIG. 8, includes one or more devicesused to transmit and receive data. A memory may be, for example, mainmemory 808, ROM 824, or a cache such as found in NB/MCH 802 in FIG. 8.

Those of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that the hardwaredepicted in FIG. 8 may vary depending on the implementation. Otherinternal hardware or peripheral devices, such as flash memory,equivalent non-volatile memory, or optical disk drives and the like, maybe used in addition to or in place of the hardware depicted in FIG. 8.Also, the processes of the illustrative embodiments may be applied to amultiprocessor data processing system, other than the SMP systemmentioned previously, without departing from the spirit and scope of thepresent invention.

Moreover, the data processing system 800 may take the form of any of anumber of different data processing systems including client computingdevices, server computing devices, a tablet computer, laptop computer,telephone or other communication device, a personal digital assistant(PDA), or the like. In some illustrative examples, data processingsystem 800 may be a portable computing device that is configured withflash memory to provide non-volatile memory for storing operating systemfiles and/or user-generated data, for example. Essentially, dataprocessing system 800 may be any known or later developed dataprocessing system without architectural limitation.

FIG. 9 illustrates an example of a cognitive system processing pipelineused to process an input request in accordance with one illustrativeembodiment. The example shown in FIG. 9 is of a question answeringpipeline, however the principles and underlying processing performed bysuch a question answering pipeline may also be applied to other types ofrequests, such as requests from a medical condition content controlsystem for a listing of medical conditions associated with a specifieduser. Thus, while the following description may make reference to“questions”, these may be any type of structured or unstructuredrequests that may be parsed to extract features of the request that maybe used to determine what is being requested and for whom such that thepipeline may then operate to evaluate patient information to determinemedical conditions associated with the specified user. FIG. 9 isprovided only as one example of the processing structure that may beimplemented to process an input request, which may be provided as anatural language request, a structured request, or a combination ofstructured and unstructured request, and present a response or result tothe input request, such as a listing of medical condition(s) that areassociated with a particular user specified in the input request.

The pipeline of FIG. 9 may be implemented, for example, as a pipeline308 of cognitive system 300 in FIG. 3. It should be appreciated that thestages of the pipeline shown in FIG. 9 are implemented as one or moresoftware engines, components, or the like, which are configured withlogic for implementing the functionality attributed to the particularstage. Each stage is implemented using one or more of such softwareengines, components or the like. The software engines, components, etc.are executed on one or more processors of one or more data processingsystems or devices and utilize or operate on data stored in one or moredata storage devices, memories, or the like, on one or more of the dataprocessing systems.

As shown in FIG. 9, the pipeline 900 comprises a plurality of stages910-980 through which the cognitive system operates to analyze an inputquestion and generate a final response. In an initial question inputstage 910, the pipeline 900 receives an input request that, for purposesof the depicted example, is presented in a natural language format. Thatis, an input request may be received from the medical condition contentcontrol system 100 for which a listing of medical conditions is to begenerated. This input request may be a natural language request orquestion, e.g., “What medical conditions are associated with John Doe?”,as a natural language statement, e.g., “Identify medical conditionsassociated with John Doe”, or as a structured request, e.g., “(John Doe,Medical Conditions).”

In response to receiving the input request, the next stage of thepipeline 900, i.e. the topic analysis stage 920, parses the inputrequest, such as by using natural language processing (NLP) techniques,to extract major features from the input request, and classify the majorfeatures according to types, e.g., names, dates, or any of a plethora ofother defined topics. For example, in the example question above, theterm “John Doe” may be associated with a topic for “persons” and “propername” indicating that this is a person for which information is beingsought, “medical conditions” may be identified as a type of informationbeing sought.

The identified major features are then used during the decompositionstage 930 to decompose the input request into one or more queries thatare applied to the corpora of data/information 945 in order to generateone or more hypotheses or candidate responses, i.e. candidate medicalconditions in the illustrative embodiments. The queries are generated inany known or later developed query language, such as the Structure QueryLanguage (SQL), or the like. The queries are applied to one or moredatabases storing information as electronic texts, files, documents,articles, websites, and the like, that make up the corpora ofdata/information 945. That is, these various sources themselves,different collections of sources, and the like, represent a differentcorpus 947 within the corpora 945. There may be different corpora 947defined for different collections of electronic documents, data files,and the like, based on various criteria depending upon the particularimplementation. For example, different corpora may be established fordifferent topics, subject matter categories, sources of information, orthe like. As one example, a first corpus may be associated withhealthcare documents for type 2 diabetes while a second corpus may beassociated with healthcare documents for obesity. In some cases, thecorpus may include the electronic medical records and/or other patientinformation for users.

The queries are applied to one or more databases storing electronictexts, documents, articles, websites, files, and the like, that make upthe corpus of data/information, e.g., the corpus of data 306 in FIG. 3.The queries are applied to the corpus of data/information at thehypothesis generation stage 940 to generate results identifyingpotential hypotheses for answering the input question, which can then beevaluated. That is, the application of the queries results in theextraction of portions of the corpus of data/information matching thecriteria of the particular query. These portions of the corpus are thenanalyzed and used, during the hypothesis generation stage 940, togenerate hypotheses for responding to the input request. Thesehypotheses are also referred to herein as “candidate responses” for theinput request. For any input request, at this stage 940, there may behundreds of hypotheses or candidate responses generated that may need tobe evaluated.

The pipeline 900, in stage 950, then performs a deep analysis of eachhypothesis or “candidate response” and performs evidence scoring toevaluate the likelihood that the particular hypothesis or candidateresponse is a correct response for the input request. For example, thecandidate response may be a medical condition which is likely to beassociated with the specified user while the evidence scoring may bebased on a further deep analysis of patient information to determinesupport for the candidate response being a valid medical condition forthe user. As mentioned above, this involves using a plurality ofreasoning algorithms and/or predictive models (PMs), each performing aseparate type of analysis of the language of the input question and/orcontent of the corpus that provides evidence in support of, or not insupport of, the hypothesis. Each reasoning algorithm/PM generates ascore based on the analysis it performs which indicates a measure ofrelevance of the individual portions of the corpus of data/informationextracted by application of the queries as well as a measure of thecorrectness of the corresponding hypothesis, i.e. a measure ofconfidence in the hypothesis. There are various ways of generating suchscores depending upon the particular analysis being performed.

In the synthesis stage 960, the large number of scores generated by thevarious reasoning algorithms/PMs are synthesized into confidence scoresor confidence measures for the various hypotheses. This process involvesapplying weights to the various scores, where the weights have beendetermined through training of the statistical model employed by thepipeline 900 and/or dynamically updated. The weights themselves may bespecified by subject matter experts or learned through machine learningprocesses that evaluate the significance of characteristics evidencepassages and their relative importance to overall candidate answergeneration. The weighted scores are processed in accordance with astatistical model generated through training of the pipeline 900 thatidentifies a manner by which these scores may be combined to generate aconfidence score or measure for the individual hypotheses or candidateresponses. This confidence score or measure summarizes the level ofconfidence that the pipeline 900 has about the evidence that thecandidate response is inferred by the input request, i.e. that thecandidate response is the correct response for the input request.

The resulting confidence scores or measures are processed by a finalconfidence merging and ranking stage 970 which compares the confidencescores and measures to each other, compares them against predeterminedthresholds, or performs any other analysis on the confidence scores todetermine which hypotheses/candidate responses are the most likely to bethe correct response to the input question. The hypotheses/candidateresponses are ranked according to these comparisons to generate a rankedlisting of hypotheses/candidate responses (hereafter simply referred toas “candidate responses”). From the ranked listing of candidateresponses, at stage 980, a final response and confidence score, or finalset of responses and confidence scores, are generated and output to themedical condition content control system.

The mechanisms of the illustrative embodiments may also be employed in acloud computing environment where such contentfiltering/blocking/replacement is performed as a cloud service to one ormore client computing devices, server computing devices, or the like.FIG. 10 depicts a cloud computing environment according an illustrativeembodiment. It should be understood in advance that although thisdisclosure includes a detailed description on cloud computing,implementation of the teachings recited herein are not limited to acloud computing environment. Rather, embodiments of the presentinvention are capable of being implemented in conjunction with any othertype of computing environment now known or later developed.

Cloud computing is a model of service delivery for enabling convenient,on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computingresources (e.g. networks, network bandwidth, servers, processing,memory, storage, applications, virtual machines, and services) that canbe rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort orinteraction with a provider of the service. This cloud model may includeat least five characteristics, at least three service models, and atleast four deployment models.

Characteristics are as follows:

On-demand self-service: a cloud consumer can unilaterally provisioncomputing capabilities, such as server time and network storage, asneeded automatically without requiring human interaction with theservice's provider.

Broad network access: capabilities are available over a network andaccessed through standard mechanisms that promote use by heterogeneousthin or thick client platforms (e.g., mobile phones, laptops, and PDAs).

Resource pooling: the provider's computing resources are pooled to servemultiple consumers using a multi-tenant model, with different physicaland virtual resources dynamically assigned and reassigned according todemand. There is a sense of location independence in that the consumergenerally has no control or knowledge over the exact location of theprovided resources but may be able to specify location at a higher levelof abstraction (e.g., country, state, or datacenter).

Rapid elasticity: capabilities can be rapidly and elasticallyprovisioned, in some cases automatically, to quickly scale out andrapidly released to quickly scale in. To the consumer, the capabilitiesavailable for provisioning often appear to be unlimited and can bepurchased in any quantity at any time.

Measured service: cloud systems automatically control and optimizeresource use by leveraging a metering capability at some level ofabstraction appropriate to the type of service (e.g., storage,processing, bandwidth, and active user accounts). Resource usage can bemonitored, controlled, and reported providing transparency for both theprovider and consumer of the utilized service.

Service Models are as follows:

Software as a Service (SaaS): the capability provided to the consumer isto use the provider's applications running on a cloud infrastructure.The applications are accessible from various client devices through athin client interface such as a web browser (e.g., web-based email). Theconsumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructureincluding network, servers, operating systems, storage, or evenindividual application capabilities, with the possible exception oflimited user-specific application configuration settings.

Platform as a Service (PaaS): the capability provided to the consumer isto deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquiredapplications created using programming languages and tools supported bythe provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlyingcloud infrastructure including networks, servers, operating systems, orstorage, but has control over the deployed applications and possiblyapplication hosting environment configurations.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): the capability provided to theconsumer is to provision processing, storage, networks, and otherfundamental computing resources where the consumer is able to deploy andrun arbitrary software, which can include operating systems andapplications. The consumer does not manage or control the underlyingcloud infrastructure but has control over operating systems, storage,deployed applications, and possibly limited control of select networkingcomponents (e.g., host firewalls).

Deployment Models are as follows:

Private cloud: the cloud infrastructure is operated solely for anorganization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party andmay exist on-premises or off-premises.

Community cloud: the cloud infrastructure is shared by severalorganizations and supports a specific community that has shared concerns(e.g., mission, security requirements, policy, and complianceconsiderations). It may be managed by the organizations or a third partyand may exist on-premises or off-premises.

Public cloud: the cloud infrastructure is made available to the generalpublic or a large industry group and is owned by an organization sellingcloud services.

Hybrid cloud: the cloud infrastructure is a composition of two or moreclouds (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities butare bound together by standardized or proprietary technology thatenables data and application portability (e.g., cloud bursting for loadbalancing between clouds).

A cloud computing environment is service oriented with a focus onstatelessness, low coupling, modularity, and semantic interoperability.At the heart of cloud computing is an infrastructure comprising anetwork of interconnected nodes.

Referring now to FIG. 10, illustrative cloud computing environment 1050is depicted. As shown, cloud computing environment 1050 comprises one ormore cloud computing nodes 1010 with which local computing devices usedby cloud consumers, such as, for example, personal digital assistant(PDA) or cellular telephone 1054A, desktop computer 1054B, laptopcomputer 1054C, a smart watch or other Internet enabled wearable device1054D, a smart or Internet enabled television 1054E, and/or automobilecomputer system 1054N, may communicate. It should be appreciated thatthese are only examples of devices with which the cloud computingenvironment 1050 may operate and other devices, such as other Internetof Things (IoT) devices, may be used without departing from the spiritand scope of the present invention. Nodes 1010 may communicate with oneanother. They may be grouped (not shown) physically or virtually, in oneor more networks, such as Private, Community, Public, or Hybrid cloudsas described hereinabove, or a combination thereof. This allows cloudcomputing environment 1050 to offer infrastructure, platforms and/orsoftware as services for which a cloud consumer does not need tomaintain resources on a local computing device. It is understood thatthe types of computing devices 1054A-N shown in FIG. 10 are intended tobe illustrative only and that computing nodes 1010 and cloud computingenvironment 1050 can communicate with any type of computerized deviceover any type of network and/or network addressable connection (e.g.,using a web browser).

Referring now to FIG. 11, a set of functional abstraction layersprovided by cloud computing environment 1050 (FIG. 10) is shown. Itshould be understood in advance that the components, layers, andfunctions shown in FIG. 11 are intended to be illustrative only andembodiments of the invention are not limited thereto. As depicted, thefollowing layers and corresponding functions are provided:

Hardware and software layer 1160 includes hardware and softwarecomponents. Examples of hardware components include mainframes, in oneexample IBM® zSeries® systems; RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer)architecture based servers, in one example IBM pSeries® systems; IBMxSeries® systems; IBM BladeCenter® systems; storage devices; networksand networking components. Examples of software components includenetwork application server software, in one example IBM WebSphere®application server software; and database software, in one example IBMDB2® database software. (IBM, zSeries, pSeries, xSeries, BladeCenter,WebSphere, and DB2 are trademarks of International Business MachinesCorporation registered in many jurisdictions worldwide).

Virtualization layer 1162 provides an abstraction layer from which thefollowing examples of virtual entities may be provided: virtual servers;virtual storage; virtual networks, including virtual private networks;virtual applications and operating systems; and virtual clients.

In one example, management layer 1164 may provide the functionsdescribed below. Resource provisioning provides dynamic procurement ofcomputing resources and other resources that are utilized to performtasks within the cloud computing environment. Metering and Pricingprovide cost tracking as resources are utilized within the cloudcomputing environment, and billing or invoicing for consumption of theseresources. In one example, these resources may comprise applicationsoftware licenses. Security provides identity verification for cloudconsumers and tasks, as well as protection for data and other resources.User portal provides access to the cloud computing environment forconsumers and system administrators. Service level management providescloud computing resource allocation and management such that requiredservice levels are met. Service Level Agreement (SLA) planning andfulfillment provide pre-arrangement for, and procurement of, cloudcomputing resources for which a future requirement is anticipated inaccordance with an SLA.

Workloads layer 1166 provides examples of functionality for which thecloud computing environment may be utilized. Examples of workloads andfunctions which may be provided from this layer include: mapping andnavigation; software development and lifecycle management; virtualclassroom education delivery; data analytics processing; transactionprocessing; and medical condition content control in accordance with oneor more of the illustrative embodiments described above.

As noted above, it should be appreciated that the illustrativeembodiments may take the form of an entirely hardware embodiment, anentirely software embodiment or an embodiment containing both hardwareand software elements. In one example embodiment, the mechanisms of theillustrative embodiments are implemented in software or program code,which includes but is not limited to firmware, resident software,microcode, etc.

A data processing system suitable for storing and/or executing programcode will include at least one processor coupled directly or indirectlyto memory elements through a communication bus, such as a system bus,for example. The memory elements can include local memory employedduring actual execution of the program code, bulk storage, and cachememories which provide temporary storage of at least some program codein order to reduce the number of times code must be retrieved from bulkstorage during execution. The memory may be of various types including,but not limited to, ROM, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, DRAM, SRAM, Flash memory,solid state memory, and the like.

Input/output or I/O devices (including but not limited to keyboards,displays, pointing devices, etc.) can be coupled to the system eitherdirectly or through intervening wired or wireless I/O interfaces and/orcontrollers, or the like. I/O devices may take many different formsother than conventional keyboards, displays, pointing devices, and thelike, such as for example communication devices coupled through wired orwireless connections including, but not limited to, smart phones, tabletcomputers, touch screen devices, voice recognition devices, and thelike. Any known or later developed I/O device is intended to be withinthe scope of the illustrative embodiments.

Network adapters may also be coupled to the system to enable the dataprocessing system to become coupled to other data processing systems orremote printers or storage devices through intervening private or publicnetworks. Modems, cable modems and Ethernet cards are just a few of thecurrently available types of network adapters for wired communications.Wireless communication-based network adapters may also be utilizedincluding, but not limited to, 802.11 a/b/g/n wireless communicationadapters, Bluetooth wireless adapters, and the like. Any known or laterdeveloped network adapters are intended to be within the spirit andscope of the present invention.

The description of the present invention has been presented for purposesof illustration and description, and is not intended to be exhaustive orlimited to the invention in the form disclosed. Many modifications andvariations will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the artwithout departing from the scope and spirit of the describedembodiments. The embodiment was chosen and described in order to bestexplain the principles of the invention, the practical application, andto enable others of ordinary skill in the art to understand theinvention for various embodiments with various modifications as aresuited to the particular use contemplated. The terminology used hereinwas chosen to best explain the principles of the embodiments, thepractical application or technical improvement over technologies foundin the marketplace, or to enable others of ordinary skill in the art tounderstand the embodiments disclosed herein.

What is claimed is:
 1. A method, in a data processing system comprising at least one processor and at least one memory, wherein the at least one memory comprises instructions that are executed by the at least one processor to configure the at least one processor to implement an annotator for annotating content using context-based surface forms, the method comprising: receiving a dictionary data structure of surface forms comprising a plurality of regular expressions; receiving input content; comparing a given span of text in the input content to each regular expression in the dictionary data structure; responsive to the given span of text matching a given regular expression, annotating the span of text with a content indicator corresponding to a content category associated with the dictionary data structure; and performing a natural language processing operation on the input content based on results of the annotation.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the input content comprises unstructured text.
 3. The method of claim 1, further comprising: generating a user specific content indicator dictionary (USCID) data structure for a patient based on at least one medical condition of the patient using at least one dictionary data structure corresponding to the at least one medical condition; and annotating the input content based on the USCID to form annotated content.
 4. The method of claim 3, further comprising suppressing or promoting content within the annotated content based on the at least one medical condition of the patient.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the given regular expression comprises a metacharacter syntax that represents prescribed targets.
 6. The method of claim 5, wherein the metacharacter syntax comprises wildcards.
 7. The method of claim 1, wherein the annotator comprises a regular expression processor that translates a regular expression in an implemented syntax into an internal representation that can be executed and matched against a string representing the span of text being searched.
 8. A computer program product comprising a computer readable storage medium having a computer readable program stored therein, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a data processing system, causes the data processing system to implement an annotator for annotating content using context-based surface forms, wherein the computer readable program causes the data processing system to: receive a dictionary data structure of surface forms comprising a plurality of regular expressions; receive input content; compare a given span of text in the input content to each regular expression in the dictionary data structure; responsive to the given span of text matching a given regular expression, annotate the span of text with a content indicator corresponding to a content category associated with the dictionary data structure; and perform a natural language processing operation on the input content based on results of the annotation.
 9. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein the input content comprises unstructured text.
 10. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein the computer readable program causes the data processing system to: generate a user specific content indicator dictionary (USCID) data structure for a patient based on at least one medical condition of the patient using at least one dictionary data structure corresponding to the at least one medical condition; and annotate the input content based on the USCID to form annotated content.
 11. The computer program product of claim 10, wherein the computer readable program causes the data processing system to suppress or promote content within the annotated content based on the at least one medical condition of the patient.
 12. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein the given regular expression comprises a metacharacter syntax that represents prescribed targets.
 13. The computer program product of claim 12, wherein the metacharacter syntax comprises wildcards.
 14. The computer program product of claim 8, wherein the annotator comprises a regular expression processor that translates a regular expression in an implemented syntax into an internal representation that can be executed and matched against a string representing the span of text being searched.
 15. An apparatus comprising: at least one processor; and at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor, wherein the at least one memory comprises instructions which, when executed by the at least one processor, cause the at least one processor to implement an annotator for annotating content using context-based surface forms, wherein the instructions cause the processor to: receive a dictionary data structure of surface forms comprising a plurality of regular expressions; receive input content; compare a given span of text in the input content to each regular expression in the dictionary data structure; responsive to the given span of text matching a given regular expression, annotate the span of text with a content indicator corresponding to a content category associated with the dictionary data structure; and perform a natural language processing operation on the input content based on results of the annotation.
 16. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the input content comprises unstructured text.
 17. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the instructions cause the processor to: generate a user specific content indicator dictionary (USCID) data structure for a patient based on at least one medical condition of the patient using at least one dictionary data structure corresponding to the at least one medical condition; and annotate the input content based on the USCID to form annotated content.
 18. The apparatus of claim 17, wherein the instructions cause the processor to suppress or promote content within the annotated content based on the at least one medical condition of the patient.
 19. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the given regular expression comprises a metacharacter syntax that represents prescribed targets.
 20. The apparatus of claim 15, wherein the annotator comprises a regular expression processor that translates a regular expression in an implemented syntax into an internal representation that can be executed and matched against a string representing the span of text being searched. 